David Kirtley

The dark forest is another philosophy around, sure, it's out there, but everybody's hiding because they don't want to be noticed.

But I think about something else, actually.

The philosophy that I've always loved, and I'm going to pronounce this wrong, so I

And that's Kardashev level two, that civilizations get so advanced and they focus not on expanding physically and expanding in space and expanding their reach by planting flags in new places, but grow physically.

their cognition, grow their ability to think, they grow their brain, they grow their intellect.

And I feel like in the last few years, we've seen a massive trend that maybe this is the thing that happens and that we do grow our intellect and we grow the intellect of the species by AI and advanced tools.

And as a society,

can just get smart enough that we don't need to go plant those flags everywhere.

And so the Matryoshka brain is a Dyson sphere where a civilization has covered the entire sun in essentially solar panels or collects its light in some way and uses all of that power to power

intelligence to power computers and to power brains.

And I think we're away from that, a ways away from that, but maybe AI and fusion together gets you actually along that path sooner.

And I'm excited by that outcome of the Fermi paradox.

And then at that point, those civilizations have a star that you can't find anymore because it's all covered and are there thinking and growing their intellects rather than actually having to physically expand.

And I know that sounds a little silly to say, but the more that I learned in my career around the balance of exactly the right temperatures where life works, exactly the right balance between the electromagnetic force and the strong force, those are things that

And so we talk about how beautiful nature is, but then you look at what each of the leaves on the tree really is and each of the cells and each of the atoms and each of the quantum substructure of that atom.

And I'm just, I'm all amazed that all the pieces come together.

Just works.

Last minute sometimes, but it does work.